[Novalug] Intel X-25M SSD with Jaunty on Lenovo T61

Michael Henry lug-user@drmikehenry.com
Tue May 26 06:57:50 EDT 2009


(Note: Resending, as the message hasn't appeared for twelve hours.)

On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 11:53 AM, Ken Kauffman <kkauffman@headfog.com> 
wrote:
>  The Intel chipset on the T61 laptop will not allow the SSD drive to 
function
>  at full capacity.  You're better off sticking with a 7200 RPM laptop 
drive if
>  its for performance reasons.  Do a search on Intel chipset and SSD and you
>  should find some articles on this.

Thanks for the pointer.  I was able to locate a couple of articles
explaining the 1.5 Gbps limitation of the T61.  For example:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=312522

It looks like the notebook's SATA interface limits the SSD's transfer
rate to about 115 MB/sec, compared with over 200 MB/sec on his desktop. 
But as some of the people commenting on the article point out, the SSD's
biggest advantages are the low access time (0.1 ms compared to 6-7 ms
for hard drives) and great random read and write performance.  Some
suggest that the real-world difference in transfer rate won't be
noticeable.  But I agree that it's unfortunate to have the expensive SSD
running below its potential.

Pete Nuwayser wrote:
>  I'm waiting on getting an SSD until two things happen:
>  1.  The prices come down, and
>  2.  There is a supported file system that is designed to work with such
>  devices.

The price is certainly up there.  As for the filesystem, there doesn't
appear to be anything optimized for SSDs yet.  Existing filesystems
would have a tendency to wear out the SSD faster than the future
filesystems under development.  I'm reading different opinions on that. 
Some suggest the wear-out factor is not important, as it would take
nearly continuous writing to wear out the device in several years, and
by that time you'll want a new drive anyway.  There are also some
suggestions for reducing the amount of data written to the drive (e.g.,
using noatime for the mount).

But maybe SSDs are still just a bit too new and costly.  The 320 GB hard
drive is cheaper than I'd remembered (down to $80 at Newegg - I'd
thought it was closer to $200).  So perhaps it's better buy another 320
GB hard drive for my wife's notebook and wait a while longer...

Thanks for the insights,
Michael Henry




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